UN-INKED: Everything You Need To Know About Tattoo Removal In 2023

My Tattoo

I used to have a tattoo. Now I don't.

It wasn't a large tattoo. It wasn't a detailed tattoo. It came in one color: black, which fades to green/black. Mine had not faded too much, it was six years old. Maybe five.

It was a small cross on the webbing of my left hand. There aren't a whole lot of nerve endings there and it's in a place of high visibility. Those are the two reasons I had it put there.

It was hand-picked with India Ink, using a simple safety pin, stretched straight and wrapped in Scotch tape on the non-business end. The tattoo pick was wielded by a 16-year old named Chad, drunk as I was on a mixture of Sprite and Gin, as he inked his first tattoo. And he was next, with me as the tattoo "artist".

I can still remember it clearly even though I was about the most intoxicated i had ever been in my life at that point. I can see the kitchen table where the deed was accomplished. I can smell the piney sccent of the fifth of gin we'd poured into the two-liter plastic bottle after pouring half of the Sprite out.

I can remember that night, fist-fighting on the front lawn; both so drunk our wild swings only made glancing contact. I recall collapsing to the matte of cool grass and half-wrestling, half-passing out in a half-hearted defense of an issue we'd both forgotten about.

I remember the police someone had called showing up and taking us both home because it was after curfew. I remember my Mormon mother refusing to take custody of me and spending the next month in Juvenile Hall not because a sentence had been imposed, but because I was a ward of the court. This was based on the custody refusal and that was the most convenient place to put me.

And i remember earlier that day in the kitchen with the troublemaker I'd intentionally befriended in school in the wake of puberty's haphazard rearrangement things. Suddenly my ranking of qualifications for friendship and my prioritization of goals were askew. Girls wanted Chad and I wanted girls. Chad said "Let's get matching tattoos on our hands'. I thought since Chad gets girls and I don't, let's go with Chad. I said I'd do it.

He was patient and precise. It hardly hurt at all due to the location and the gin, but I gamely grimaced and grit my teeth occasionally as Chad aimed and poked.

In about fifteen minutes i had a small black cross--a plus sign with one intersecting line about a third longer than the other -- on my hand. A thinly-layered sheen of blood kept appearing as it leaked from the poked pores and i kept wiping it off with a paper napkin. The blood libel for chicks..

Tattoos were not mainstream in the 1980s. Hells Angels bikers and ex-cons were the canvases where most tattoos were found and when someone with a tattoo was encountered, most people assumed that someone was both.

I was raised in a strict Mormon household. Anything not socially acceptable in average households was at least doubly so in mine. We were warned of the slippery slope danger of holding hands with the opposite sex. A popular TV show, "Three's Company", was deemed too risqué for our viewing discretion.

What i was doing was not your typical teenage angst, demanding to be allowed to wear hair long or dress less conservatively, thiis was throwing down the gauntlet, a rejection of the entire way of life i had been brought up with. A way of life I was expected to adhere to in order to remain a member in good standing. Not of the church, of the family.

My rejection of their principles resulted in their rejection of me and i ended up joining the Army right after turning seventeen. After basic training and AIT, i ended up in Augsburg, Germany. The tattoo was not a problem in the Army.

Fast forward a few years and I'm a vet looking for a civilian job whose primary work experience was marching in a unit and directing the firing line of howitzers to their intended targets using paper maps and the reports of forward observers.

There was no direct correlation job-wise in the civilian market so I tried to be less specific in interviews and instead promote the generally useful traits of working as part of a team, problem solving, respect for authority and rules.

This perspective went over well enough that first interviews turned into second interviews most of the time. One of those second interviews paid over three times minimum wage and seemed like a rewarding place to work. I stressed and stressed over the interview until the appointed time came.

The interview seemed to be going very well. The woman interviewing me was smiling a lot, laughing and making comments like "you will be working closely with such-and-such department" rather than you "would be", and she said "after you start you'll be eligible for medical in ninety days" rather than "if you start."

Then things went sideways. She noticed the tattoo.

She was wrapping up and began walking me out when she suddenly stopped.

"What's that?" she asked. She was looking at my hand.

Taken aback, i replied, dismissively, "Oh haha. That would be my middle finger to my Mormon upbringing."

Her tone changed. "Do you have those all over your body?"

I couldn't believe this was happening. Showing my body isn't part of the job, I thought. It's a desk job. What difference did it make?

"No," i said. "Just the one rebellious little cross."

Her smile was gone. She walked to the end of the hall but not back to the reception area she had met me in. I knew I'd lost the job and i was right. They never called or replied to my requests for the status of my application.

I ended up a few weeks later at a minimum wage job. Worse than minimum wage--commission only. Selling car insurance to people who don't qualify for most insurances. So we were really expensive and it was hard to have anything to smile about most days.

One afternoon i sat there mulling why this was the best there was for me. Hadn't i done well in the army? Hadn't i been promoted to squad leader? Didn't i receive the Distinguished Honor Graduate award in AIT?

I thought of the tattoo and the job I was well qualified for that paid triple and didn't require dealing with rejection all day long. Rejected from a job was the first rejection and it led to a job that is more rejection. Every hour. Every week. I was a reject.

Because of.... THIS! .And i looked at the cross in my hand with shaking rage. I hated it. It could not stay. I would cut it out and leave a giant gaping hole in my hand that would heal over the muscle and I'd look like a burn victim. That might actually help me get hired, from sympathy. There is no sympathy for the Devil.

I grabbed a paper clip from a desk drawer and started gouging at that which offended me.

Two weeks later it was gone. Permanently. Twenty years later it was still gone. Permanently.

I used nothing that can't be found in any household. It was free. It took about four hours but much of that was spent interrupted because I was still at work answering phones for insurance quotes. It could probably be done in an hour without interruption.

The next section describes exactly what I did in compete detail and even has pictures and diagrams to avoid any confusion. This is exactly what I did. These are exactly the results i achieved. I no longer have a tattoo or noticeable scar.

But I must make clear that I am only retelling my story. I don't know if there were factors i wasn't aware of that make my experience different than what someone else would experience. I don't know what medical or infectious dangers exist or how to prevent them.

So I'm not advocating that people do this themselves. I have to say this. I don't want to be responsible for someone hurting themselves.

But I also feel a responsibility to add my experience as an alternative consideration to the laser-based treatments available commercially which essentially do the same thing I did but require multiple treatments, prohibitive costs, and are extremely painful.

Let me make clear that what i did is painful too. Very painful. The availability of pain medication, numbing agents or a couple stiff shots of whisky would have probably made all the difference. But I didn't have a clinical setting or anything to mitigate the pain and my PERSONAL EXPERIENCE was that those weren't necessary.

So if we understand each other-- and i won't be hearing some day that someone said they read this and decided i was telling them to try it and it was safe -- then let's proceed to the next section where i detail specifically what i did.